This post is part of our continuing series on beneficiary designations for retirement accounts after the Secure Act.  As you may know, the Secure Act largely did away with the stretch distributions for most beneficiaries substituting instead a ten-year payout.  There are exceptions to this and this can fundamentally change the choices we recommend for our clients.  In this blog post, my friend Steve Hartnett, the Director of Education for the American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, … [Read more...] about Beneficiary Designations and the SECURE Act: Eligible Designated Beneficiaries

This is the second in a series of blog posts from my friend Steve Hartnett, Director of Education for the American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys.  Here Steve talks about how the Secure Act, which became effective at the beginning of 2020, impacts the designation of trusts as the beneficiary of retirement accounts.  We make these designations pretty commonly for our clients at Clarity Legal Group and the approach Steve describes here is the one we most common implement.  In any event, … [Read more...] about Beneficiary Designations and the SECURE Act: Prior Designations

Anyone who has worked with Clarity Legal Group has heard us say that estate planning is just as much about how your organize what you own as what your legal documents say.    Beneficiary designations can seem simple when they are not. But their simplicity is sort of like an iceberg. Danger lurks beneath those tranquil waters, both for the client and the attorney. We find ourselves more frequently crafting customized beneficiary designations for retirement accounts, in order to get the plan … [Read more...] about Beneficiary Designations and the SECURE Act Basics